Cosmography and Geography in Early Indian Literature c6.s1.5

c6.s1.5

a great drought in Jambu-dvīpa”), etc., the reference is no doubt to the subcontinent; cf. Jambu opposed to Simhala. Śākala is modern Sialkot in West Pakistan. 3. The river-name Sindhu (the Indus) became Hindu to the Iranians who used the word to indicate the people of the Sindhu valley at least as early as the sixth century B.C. The same word became Indu (Indus) to the Greeks who called the said people Indian and their country India from the days of Herodotus (484-424 B.C.), though the name was applied by the Greeks to the Indian subcontinent occasionally from the time of Megasthenes who lived for sometime at the court of Candragupta Maurya (c. 324-299 B.C.). Megasthenes mentions Palimbothra (Pāṭaliputra, the capital of Candragupta Maurya) in the land of the Prasians (Prācya) as ‘the largest city of India’. Later writers sometimes confused the two senses of India. The Chinese name of India, variously written as Shen-tu, Hsien-tou and Yin-tu, is also derived from Sindhu, though Yin-tu was sometimes wrongly associated with Sanskrit indu (moon). The Chinese sometimes mentioned India as Si-fang (the west), Wu-t’ian (the Five Indies), A-li-ya-t’i-sha (Ārya-deśa), Po-lo-men-kuo (Brāhmaṇa-deśa) and Indravardhana. The Muslim writers mentioned India as Hindu-stān which meant (1) the upper basin of the Ganges, (2) North India, or (3) India. Cf. Raychaudhuri, Stud. Ind. Ant., pp. 78ff., 80; PHAI, 1938, p. 223.
4. Select Inscriptions, p. 209.